Blog > Postcrossing in numbers: 2020 stats
We have a soft spot for statistics and we know many of you do as well, so here comes the yearly post with some juicy stats about Postcrossing. These were compiled by Paulo, with data from the whole 2020. Shall we have a look?
4,513,545 postcards received
That’s about half a million postcards fewer than the previous year, which is understandable considering the year we’ve just had. In fact, looking at the graph of postcards sent per month last year, you can clearly see the “pandemic dip” in April.

Things have slowly gotten better since then though, and we saw a lot of new members on the site in the following months, as people settled into their new routines and started to explore new hobbies they could do from home.
28.27 days (average) and 17.67 days (median) travel time
No surprise that things were a bit slower last year! With thousands of flights cancelled and postal services scrambling to find alternative routes to send mail abroad, postcards spent more days on the road. Some even crossed continents in ships or trains!
These numbers are calculated for the whole year though… How do the numbers look like on a weekly basis?

Things got a little delayed mid-2020, with postcards taking a few days longer to arrive on average, but the situation seems to have somewhat recovered in the meantime.
21,954,937,005 kms or (13,642,165,382 miles) of total traveled distance
Quite a bit less than last year, but to be expected with less postcards traveling, closed borders and cancelled flights. Many postal services have restricted their deliveries to nearby countries, where connections were easier to ensure and so, on average, postcards traveled to closer destinations last year. 26% of all postal routes remain closed at the moment, but things have slowly been improving with more and more connections being re-opened every week.
Here’s how far postcards traveled, per week:


The average travel distance was 4,864.23 kms (or 3,022.49 miles) per postcard — around 7.5% less distance than in 2019.
19,974 kms or (12,411 miles) was the longest distance traveled by a postcard
Postcard ES-622789 traveled between the town of Espasante in northern Spain and Christchurch in New Zealand — just a few kilometers short of its true antipodal point!
1,004,831 postcards sent from Germany
Postcrossers in Germany broke their 2019 record and sent even more postcards in 2020, reaching the 1 million postcards/year threshold! This enthusiasm also led them to add one more digit to their postcard IDs — postcard DE-10000000 was registered just yesterday. 🎉
Here are the countries in the top 20:
Ranking | Country/Territory | Sent |
---|---|---|
1 | 🇩🇪 Germany | 1,004,831 |
2 | 🇺🇸 U.S.A. | 688,519 |
3 | 🇷🇺 Russia | 391,653 |
4 | 🇳🇱 Netherlands | 258,342 |
5 | 🇫🇮 Finland | 199,294 |
6 | 🇹🇼 Taiwan | 137,332 |
7 | 🇬🇧 United Kingdom | 118,436 |
8 | 🇨🇳 China | 113,816 |
9 | 🇯🇵 Japan | 107,508 |
10 | 🇧🇾 Belarus | 100,352 |
11 | 🇨🇿 Czechia | 95,558 |
12 | 🇫🇷 France | 87,882 |
13 | 🇨🇦 Canada | 82,095 |
14 | 🇵🇱 Poland | 64,027 |
15 | 🇧🇪 Belgium | 54,927 |
16 | 🇦🇹 Austria | 46,998 |
17 | 🇨🇭 Switzerland | 46,209 |
18 | 🇱🇹 Lithuania | 42,652 |
19 | 🇦🇺 Australia | 38,834 |
20 | 🇭🇰 Hong Kong | 34,279 |
Same countries as last year in that list, with some shuffling around. Germany, USA, Netherlands, Switzerland and the UK managed to increase their total of sent postcards, but the remaining countries all sent less cards throughout last year.
DJHK sent the most postcards (registered in 2020)
Jürgen (aka DJHK) sent 2485, 103 more than the second most active postcrosser reinholdo (2382). Willi (2360), Antje321 (2322) and Sidolix (2310) complete the top 5.
Åland Islands sent the most postcards per capita
We thought it would be cool to do a different kind of ranking with 2020's data, to give less populous countries and territories a chance to be featured. Here are postcards sent per 1000 inhabitants, for countries with more than 10 members:
Ranking | Country/Territory | Postcards per capita |
---|---|---|
1 | 🇦🇽 Åland Islands | 80.38 |
2 | 🇫🇮 Finland | 37.09 |
3 | 🇱🇹 Lithuania | 15.85 |
4 | 🇳🇱 Netherlands | 15.47 |
5 | 🇬🇬Guernsey | 13.58 |
6 | 🇩🇪 Germany | 12.57 |
7 | 🇧🇾 Belarus | 11.09 |
8 | 🇱🇺 Luxembourg | 10.92 |
9 | 🇨🇿 Czechia | 9.29 |
10 | 🇱🇻 Latvia | 7.41 |
11 | 🇪🇪 Estonia | 6.97 |
12 | 🇮🇲 Isle of Man | 6.74 |
13 | 🇹🇼 Taiwan | 6.22 |
14 | 🇸🇮 Slovenia | 5.98 |
15 | 🇨🇭 Switzerland | 5.61 |
16 | 🇦🇹 Austria | 5.51 |
17 | 🇲🇹 Malta | 5.28 |
18 | 🇧🇪 Belgium | 4.99 |
19 | 🇭🇰 Hong Kong | 4.79 |
20 | 🇸🇰 Slovakia | 4.05 |
It’s interesting to see smaller countries and islands thrown into the mix! Here’s a previous similar ranking we did some years ago.
October 1, 2020 was the day in which more postcards were sent
No surprises there — World Postcard Day was a huge hit, with a little more than 40,000 postcards received which were sent on that day. The following 3 best days of the year all happened in February, with around 16,000 postcards being sent.
And that’s it for last year’s statistics! I know you’re all eager to read about the census results as well, but it’ll still take us some time to parse those 30,000 or so replies… 😅 We’ll post about it here on the blog once we have some insights to share!

Tags: postcrossing, statistics
56 comments so far
That's a lot of postcards! :D
I know with this coronavirus I sent more postcards this year.
One of my favourite "going out" activities was a trip to my mailbox.
The people at my post office are enthusiastic about the postcards I send and receive. And are always happy to tell me of newly issued postage stamps as I spend a fortune on postage!
Keep up the good work!
I'm sure more women than men use it by a large margin!
In 2020 I have sent less postcards than in 2019. I missed my hunting in shops for rare cards...but I am glad to send at least one card a day...
Most important: my dear Postcrossers, all of you, stay happy and healthy and let us bring peace, harmony and tolerance to our planet!
Also a big THANK YOU to Paulo and Ana (meiadeleite) for their work!
I'm still upset about many of my postcards having gone lost during the shut-down while in Bahrain, though a single postcard I mailed in June from Bahrain finally arrived. There's hope the remaining cards might make it. Did anyone else have more problems with expired cards last year than normally?
I would really love to know the average # of postcards sent & received in a day.
@captkev - there are some stats here on gender pronoun use in the link below that clearly show more women participate than men in Postcrossing - I've never seen a breakdown by age though.
https://www.postcrossing.com/stats/users
I think the growth in the number of postcrossers in Canada has really slowed since a major postage increase took effect several years ago. It led me to redirect most of my outgoing cards to Canadian and US swaps through tags and round robins on the forum.
For any organisation statics are so important to know the growth, plan for future . Thank you for sharing with us !
Yes, last year was special.
And when it comes to postage - better not to talk. When I started postcrossing in 2008, stamps to Europe were for 17 and overseas for 18 CZK (approx. 0.65 / 0.69 EUR). Today it is 39 and 45 CZK (1.50 / 1.73 EUR)
Have a wonderful year, Paulo and Ana, and other postcrossing team members!~
@Alexjcbcn Well, I don't know why there are so many German Postcrossers. I guess sending mail is just a beautiful tradition here. Also we are a lot of people. 😄
And, to the Postcrossing staff - you are amazing! Thank you so much for all your hard work!
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